Features // Madagascar

After weeks of deliberation, we’re thrilled to announce the results of the Rough Guides and Journeys are made @gapyear.com writing competition. The winning piece can be read here, but we’ve also picked two fantastic runners-up. Kyle Cunningham chose the theme “my greatest adventure”, writing about several days of searching for the rare silky sifaka in the lemur-filled jungles…

Gerald Durrell likened Madagascar to “a badly presented omelette”, observing that “like all the best omelettes, well or badly presented, it is stuffed with goodies”. He wasn’t wrong. The world’s fourth-largest island packs a huge ecological punch: 80 per cent of its flora and fauna is endemic, from lumbering, goggle-eyed chameleons to giant jumping rats…

Things aren’t always as they seem and although you may feel like you’ve stepped onto the set of a sci-fi movie, these extra-terrestrial looking landscapes are set firmly on our planet. Feel like you’ve been transported to a whole new world in these five striking, stunning and perhaps even a little bit spooky landscapes… Salar…